


Carving

by elephant_eyelash



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: F/M, Gift Fic, Literacy stuffs, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-14
Updated: 2013-03-14
Packaged: 2017-12-05 07:16:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/720313
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elephant_eyelash/pseuds/elephant_eyelash
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Arya still expected to see the outlaws every time she looked back. She had tried to help them by scratching her name on the trunks of trees when she went in the bushes to make water (p1253)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Carving

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Rainfallen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rainfallen/gifts).



> An old gift fic for Sarah from the ol' tumblrsphere.

It was not special, it was not like a Weirwood, nor was it a tree they sung about in tales or wrote down in verse. It was almost anonymous, standing there with his brothers and sisters, one of thousands. It would have been, if not for the carving upon it, the carving that made Gendry stop and stare at it. 

Letters; cruel, unfamilar letters; were scarring its skin. Gendry imagined the knife running down it— frantically, he knew, because the work was unsteady— the outer bark slicing away into curls. He imagined its owner, his fear (wolves, nightmares, both) running through the steel of the knife, and then down into the bark. If it was an Old God in there, would it have been able to feel it? No, he remembered, only Weirwoods housed Gods. He pressed his hand against the tree, imagining a heart there, beating softly. 

Maybe it was a sign of the Old Gods. She had once told him those Gods lived in the trees, but he knew he wasn’t supposed to believe in such things— all there was was light, darkness, shadow, the ashes and embers of dreamfire pouring into his skin. 

Perhaps they were not letters at all, but a face. A face that could peer into the marrow of you, read patterns in your skin, find the imperfections you tried your best to keep hidden. But no, they were words— or both, maybe?— he knew, from when he would watch Mott write down orders (“I’ll teach you one day, boy” he would say, sweat slick on his skin, “but not now”). Whether words or a face, or both, Gendry was fixed to it. 

He brought his fingers up to the indentations, felt it. He was good with feeling things, good with steel and wood and stone, but however much he willed its secrets would not be revealed to him. He felt stupid and angry at himself, angry that he couldn’t read words. Was it a warning? He may be dead soon, bleeding under these words that would not yield to him. He knew most things about this land now; how to read the water for flooding, the sky for storms; but not words, not words, words which were cruel like lordlings in their finery that used to pass him, dirty and thin on the streets of King’s Landing. 

They could read these words, he knew. But they couldn’t mend their own swords, or know where to scavenge for the best mushrooms so the little ones wouldn’t starve, or where to hide when the Lions came. 

Yet, somehow, the words made him feel calm the longer he looked at them. Perhaps it said something beautiful, perhaps it was the last message of someone who had passed peacefully under this tree, sinking into the mud and smiling underneath the sun, before Winter, before War. Somehow Gendry had forgotten that death could be quiet. He had watched his Mother die, body arching from fever, joints twisting into ugly shapes that seemed not to disappear, even if he shut his eyes. He had seen more deaths that had the shadow of his mother’s. Some had been deaths he had created himself. Hands that shaped metal and soothed nightmares and farmed and mended would become ugly extensions, weapons of muscle and flesh for her revenge, for the revenge that had become his (Arya he would repeat to himself in prayer as their breath escaped them, Arya Arya Arya). 

He ran his fingers over the scar once more, tattooed it onto his mind, and his lips ran along to the shapes of her name.


End file.
